warnings: everything you normally get with this fic, along with, uh, vague sexual content between characters under 15.
notes: hello! this chapter's a little bit late, because I'm a bit of a late person. I want to start out with a big, sweeping, overly-excited THANK YOU to everyone who came out of the woodwork and reviewed last chapter and, especially, those of you who review every chapter or, at least, every chapter you can manage. I appreciate it so much you've got no real idea. The fact that anyone (besides me) cares about this story is continuously astounding to me. *cough, cough, subtle hint to keep reviewing if you get a chance, cough* but, thank you for reading, either way. thank you for everything.
chapter eleven - the saints go marching.
"So man's insanity is heaven's sense."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
Light dreams he is a child. He is a child and L is there, only L is the same age as he always is, must have always been - and even though they prickle in the back of his mind, Light doesn't examine the slightly pedophiliac implications therein - he just walks through halls and doorways and is a child and knows that L is with him and that everything is solved. He dreams of the Tokyo zoo, of going there as a boy with Sayu, except he's not there with Sayu, just watching himself there with Sayu, the way you sometimes do in dreams. Their parents aren't with them but it doesn't feel like it matters. There's nobody there, not even the animals. The cages are all empty. Then Sayu is gone and so is he and the world is wiped clear, crisp and clean and untouched; pure like Eden, like before the fall.
He dreams that Kaito Hidaka has come back to life and is sitting next to him in a hospital waiting room making awkward conversation that Light tries to ignore. He's visiting his father in the hospital, and then it's L, and then it's Ryuk, and the pieces of the world - the shapes making up his perception of existence - all sort of slide together and they all feel very indistinguishable from each other, like it could be L or his father or Ryuk and it doesn't matter which. Light sinks right into the cheap plastic hospital chair and then he is Kaito Hidaka and he's the little boy's dead body - liver cut out; genetic material found at the scene; semen, that means semen, semen in a little boy - and he is L, too, and L is Kaito Hidaka and nothing is anything, and none of it actually matters, does it?
Something hits him in the foot. He wakes with a start.
He sees the whites of L's eyes, flicking around like those of a cornered animal in the dark space between their bodies. He'd been asleep, too, Light realizes, and feels vaguely pleased. He shifts, wants to groan but doesn't. His thighs ache from what he'd let L do to him.
"Who wants to hear a terrifying story?"
Light's brain twists up on itself trying to rationalize the voice with the body beside him, then tenses as he realizes the situation and turns to face Misa, who's standing by the foot of the bed and digging through her purse, which is balanced on the blankets over Light's feet. He thinks there's a skull and cross bones keychain digging into his ankle.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, voice taut and thirsty. L hasn't even moved, playing dead the way animals do to avoid predators. "How did you get in? You don't even have your own key."
Misa waves her hand, batting aside the undertones of get the fuck out, and nodding back at the door where a greying mound of hip muscle is disappearing through the wall. "Rem let me in."
"Rem doesn't have a key either," Light says, with unbearable, early-morning idiocy.
L snorts into his pillow. Misa ignores them both.
"Someone broke into our apartment last night," she says, phrasing it that way even though Light's barely been there long enough to get a decent look at the place, and wouldn't properly consider it his even if he had.
"What," Light says, without raising his voice so it's not a proper question. He uses L's shoulder as leverage to push himself into a reasonable sitting position and then tries to aim a cool glare at Misa, but thinks it's probably thrown off by the way he has to blink the glare from the desk lamp out of his eyes. He thinks of his dreams and is hit with an unidentifiable feeling, a gutting nostalgia - like maybe he's recovered some repressed childhood memory without really remembering it at all - and the sensation seeps into him and then fades as soon as he tries to think on it, flicking out like it was never there in the first place.
He thinks of L beside him, thinks that this situation would be ideal if Misa weren't standing at the foot of the bed, digging through her purse and chewing her black nail polish into little chips that fall and dirty the crisp white of the bedspread. Her make-up is perfectly even, farce touched up into a pale mask, but Light can see that she's been crying in the corners of her eyes and measures her worth, or lack thereof, by how little he cares.
"Someone broke into our apartment," she repeats, finally reaching whatever she'd been digging through her ridiculously oversized bag for and pulls out several folded sheets of paper, waving them around like some kind of badge of honor. "Or a bunch of people, I don't know, but oh my god, I am freaking out. I feel totally sick."
Light processes her words and vaguely wonders if their TV was stolen. Do they even have a TV?
"Have an aspirin," he says, lying back down. L is still in the same position, playing at sleep. He's even regulated his breathing and it puffs steadily against Light's face, tickles.
"They were looking for the Death Note," Misa says, abruptly, in a way that no one should say that sort of thing.
Light is up again in a second. "They were what?"
Misa's staring at him like a dog who expects a smack with the newspaper, and Light has half a mind to give her one. "They were talking about a black notebook," she says. "I mean, they didn't find anything - "
She wrings her hands and when Light realizes what she's holding, he leans over and snatches the loose pages of the Death Note out of them, counting them off. Six pages, he'd told her to take out six, and they're all here; two of them written on in Misa's hasty little gel-pen scrawl, the rest bare. He counts them again, just to make sure, just to comfort himself, then nods, handing them back. She takes them slowly, hands almost shaking, and she's scared, he realizes, with a mild sort of disdain.
He moves fully off the bed, hears a clang and feels a weight following him, but ignores it, taking her hands in his, grip far tighter than the boys in the dramas on TV hold their girls. He can feel her shaking in his fingers, like the wing of a bird.
"You're sure, Misa?" he says, watches her wide eyes get wider, watches her try to play it all off, wishes he had never met her. Her usefulness is not worth her upkeep. "You understand what we're doing here, right? You understand the risks?"
She nods, biting her lip. It's bright red and looks like plastic. He wonders what it would be like to kiss her, to fuck her. He feels a heavy pull on his wrist, knows that L is trying to tug him back for some reason, and only realizes - slowly, and without full consciousness of the process - that they are chained together. That L isn't chained to the bed, he's chained to Light.
To make the sex easier, he remembers. Just like old times.
"Yeah," Misa says, after a moment. The chain jingles again. Light ignores it.
"So you understand," he says, leaning so close he thinks that Misa must feel his breath on her face, must be enjoying it, "that if anyone found the Death Note, we'd both be executed, right?"
"She might actually be allowed to live out her days in solitary confinement," L puts in from his place on the bed, voice muffled in the sheets. He sounds like someone who's talking to a television program.
"Shut-up, L," Light says, without turning around.
L moves so that his voice comes more clearly, but no less obnoxiously - and Light really doesn't have time for this right now - "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed."
Misa's fingernails are digging sharply into Light's palms and he lets them for a few moments before detaching her easily. She's jealous, of course, and can't do a thing about the situation, and it would be slightly gratifying to him - seeing how she more or less forced him into being her boyfriend - if it wasn't so annoying. He grits his teeth, runs a hand through his hair. He'd pace if he wouldn't have to take L halfway around the room with him. Fuck, where's the key? It had been in his pocket but his slacks are strewn somewhere on the floor, and - priorities. Right.
He has to sort this out first.
"Who were they?" he asks Misa, while leaning down to pick up his discarded pants.
She's got her arms crossed, bag clutched to her chest like a designer shield. "I don't know," she says, looking at the mess of clothes with a wrinkle of her nose that's Light's sure is mostly faked for show. "The investigation team? The police?"
"No, no," Light shakes his head, "they trust me."
He glances at L, wonders if he could possibly have had anything to do with this, but then - no. No, of course not. He couldn't have managed it, and wouldn't have, anyway. He loves Light.
"They were speaking Japanese," Misa says, as he turns back to her, "but, I don't know, their accents were kind of weird. They sounded like westerners."
Light sighs, standing up. He'd known this would happen eventually, he'd just hoped it would have been a more direct confrontation, one that he could easily use to lend weight to his innocence. "Watari," he says. It's just one word, but by the way L turns to look at him, eyes wide and quietly forbidding, Light knows that he's right. Has known all along that the old man doesn't trust him, but he can't do anything without L, he's barely more than a butler with a sniper rifle, and he wouldn't kill Light if he thought that there was a chance that L was alive and he could use Light to find him.
That's what he'd been betting on, and that's what -
"If you kill Watari," L says, sitting up in bed, "I will kill you."
"Yeah, yeah," Light says, waving him aside to turn back to Misa, but before he can say anything else, there's a rough tug on the chain - he really should have just left him tied to the headboard - and he's being pulled face first toward L, who's suddenly standing and appearing much taller than he usually does, theatrical hunch momentarily abandoned.
He grabs Light by the chin, titling his face up like one would that of an uncooperative subordinate. Misa gasps ostentatiously.
"It's a mark of inexperience that you think I am pulling punches, but it's not charming and it's not cute and you are not endearing yourself to me. If you kill Watari, I will kill you. It is very simple." Light means to shove him off, but then his jaw is let go and L's hand is around his neck, thumb pressed to his throat and fingers tickling his top vertebra. "You're sloppy, much sloppier than you think you are, and a much easier target than you like to pretend to be."
"Hey!" Misa squeaks, uselessly.
Light does twist out of his grip then, although it feels curiously like he only succeeds because L lets him. It feels strangely like a betrayal, like L has stabbed him in the back, even though L has been aiming a knife at his front for as long as they've known each other.
"I have your name," he spits. He has the notebook, he holds the reigns, he owns L, and L needs to remember that. L is brilliant and clever and he looks good naked, but he is not worth more than the world and Light won't sacrifice it for him. If he needs to kill Watari, he'll kill Watari, and if he needs to kill L, he'll do it without a second thought.
He just needs to make sure he won't need to.
"Fine," L says, drooping back into his normal pose, "kill me. Call my bluff and write it. Make a little flourish coming off the t the way you like to do. You won't and we both know you won't, so stop pretending that you will." His voice is softer now and he looks tired and very mussed, and Light thinks about L's hands around his thighs last night, about the way he'd bent him, the way it had hurt. He still aches slightly, still isn't quite used to the feel of having something, someone, in him.
It's glorious, in more ways than one. Like penance for the both of them.
Misa's just standing stock still, arms still crossed across her chest, not even going for her notebook pages just in case Light had needed saving - he hadn't, of course, but it's the principle of it. A lot of good she is.
He straightens his shirt, looks around for a moment before realizing he hasn't brought a change of clothes. Nevermind, he'll need to go by Misa's - their - apartment, anyway. See if anything was left behind, if he can confirm the fact that it was Watari's doing. He must have operatives, in the vein of Aiber and Wedy, and - where are Aiber and Wedy? They'd disappeared more or less right after L did, and Light had assumed they'd skipped town, had planned to knock them off in due time, but to give it a bit to avoid casting suspicion. But considering they're both in love with him or something, it makes sense that they'd stick around, in case L wasn't, by some chance, dead.
He'll have to look into that. He'll have to look into everything. L's right, of course. He has been sloppy. L has made him sloppy, has been distracting him so thoroughly that he's let the details slip between his fingers, and he can't let that continue.
"Misa, take L for a shower," he says, sneering slightly at the state of his own reflection and unlocking the cuff on his wrist. "If he escapes, I'll write both of your names down."
As he leaves, locking the door behind him, he just barely hears Misa's resignedly emphatic, "Ew."
Misa leads him with the chain, putting as much space between them as possible. He doesn't struggle, lets her attach him to the shower rail and leans lazily against the grimy tile wall and watches her adjust her hair in the small mirror. She reapplies her lipgloss with an unsteady hand, the smack of her lips overly loud in the small room. The faucet drips and it feels like a poorly made horror movie set - something maudlin to do with Stockholm syndrome, perhaps. Maybe Light really will slaughter them in a fit of peak and no more will be said about.
"You're afraid," he says to Misa. The water droplets keep time, slowly, slowly, one after another. This is a place that's gone bad, or was never good in the first place. It's a far lower standard of living than he's used to, but it feels the same as every other room he's ever stayed in - detached, unremarkable; something completely separate from what he is.
She doesn't look at him. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ryuzaki." She reapplies her mascara expertly, painting herself in thick black swipes. She might be very warm and pink and alive under all of the layers, but from here she is just as cooly remote as her dear, dear Light.
"Of course," he says, without a shred of agreement in his voice. Without a shred of anything, really. He's trying to navigate how he feels about this situation - about Light, about her, about whether or not he hates them or can forgive them for what they are, or whether he could possibly justify caring for Light and condemning her, and if he even wants to. It's best to stay as far as possible from feeling anything, until he can sort it all out properly.
He pulls on his lower lip, stares at an errant crack in the ceiling plaster. It looks like a tree in winter, cemented purposefully above him to make him think of far away, overwhelming things. As if Light could plan out everything, even the minutest details of L's perception.
"You're more comfortable around me than you are him," he says, after a moment. "And you don't even like me."
She looks at him then, turning her made-up doll eyes on him. He admires her commitment, almost - not to Light, particularly, but to all of it. She's gotten herself into a mess of a thing - world domination tends to get messy - and most people in her position would have cut and run by now, devotion or no devotion.
"Don't be stupid," she says, but without the usual giddy inflection. It sounds like straight talk for once, and L appreciates the attempt, even if it's not for his benefit. She scratches at her arm, leaving little white marks across her skin, and L watches them fade to pink. She looks back at the mirror, says to him, "I'm sure he'll get tired of you at some point," with that same honest flatness of voice, "and then I can kill you."
L traces the lines of the tiles, waits for about forty seconds for his heart to stop - just out of curiosity - and then nods. "I'm sure he will."
Six steps from the front door, two to the right. The floorboard with the scuff-mark on it. It comes looses easily enough - but not too easy, which is why he'd chosen it - and the Death Note looks a little bit like salvation from here. Like it had the first time: him in his cloudy, meaningless little world with everyone else, and the note was a rope, a ladder that pulled him up into the heavens. No, no, it didn't pull him up, he climbed it himself. The Death Note was only the means by which he traveled. The beautiful places he reached, places he made, were all because of his own genius. He made his own destiny, wrote his own story.
He touches the cover, the material familiar against his fingers, and feels like God again. He never wants to feel anything different.
"You need to get me Watari's name," he says, not looking up. Rem is watching him, of course, is always watching for some slip up, something she can use to try to convince Misa that he's no good, but it's hopeless and they both know it. By now she ought to be resigned to her fate as his tool. Most everyone else is.
"I've told you before, Light Yagami," she says, dull voice grating on his eardrums, "I cannot give you the name of a human. If you were to make the eye trade - "
"Don't start," he says, flipping through the notebook with one hand. "You just want to get rid of me sooner." If the notebook is here, and the notebook's current owner is here, then that must mean -
He smiles slightly. "Ryuk?"
The familiar split-mouth grin fades in through the wall before him, and then he's looking at Ryuk face to face. They smile at each other the way old acquaintances might as Ryuk moves fully into the room, jagged black body filling the dull space up with his eerily comedic presence.
"Oh, hey, Light," he says, resting his head on his hand. He glances around the apartment skeptically, ugly eyes tracing the dust and disuse with the usual sparkling interest.
"I don't suppose you'll get me his name, will you?" Light asks.
Ryuk scratches his chin with an uncomfortably sharp nail. "Nah, sorry. No can do." He rolls his position, suddenly upright. "Hey, does this mean I'm back with you? Misa's cute and all, but all she does is change her clothes and talk to people on the phone. You're way more interesting."
"No," Light says, tearing out a couple more pages and then replacing the notebook, "this will have to stay here for now, and you have to stay with Misa." He sets the floorboard back in place, positioning it so it blends with all the others. No one can possibly find L, which means nobody could possibly find the note.
Light has to keep his most important belongings well protected.
"This is assault," L says.
The fan whirs loudly in the large room and a warm summer breeze flows heavy through the windows, making the sheets hot and their skin stick together. B presses his mouth, slowly and experimentally, to L's collarbone.
"It's not assault," he mumbles, brushing the accusation off with a nasal smile in his voice. "I'm 12." He nips and tongues L's skin, and L just lies there sweating and rolling his eyes.
"I don't see what that's got to do with anything."
B's hand slips down, tracing over L's hips, touching the places where the bones press through his skin, imagining that they could pierce it and deflate him - like a bag full of hot air. The body is so strange that way. Or maybe it's the soul that doesn't belong. Both worthy things in their own right, but all jumbled up and wrong when combined. B imagines he could unzip L's skin and pull his soul right out of him, then unzip his own and let L crawl inside. Or the other way around - it doesn't matter, really. He's pressed flat to him, body spread out on top, a perfect mirror, but it's still not close enough.
And L doesn't understand. He's too selfish, too reasonable, and B's love confessions - hands and teeth and dead, brittle things - don't make any sense to him.
"I'm at a naturally curious age," B says, licking the crease of L's shoulder. His fingers tickle the line of L's pants, gaudily - like the porn mags that Grady keeps under his bed and thinks Quillish doesn't know about - mostly just to give L a chance to get used to the reality of B touching him and of him letting B touch him.
L glares at the ceiling and B can just barely make it out in the dark - his eyes are long adjusted, though, and he knows every bend of every feature, could draw it all from memory a hundred times over.
"So go touch yourself," L says.
B touches him in wrong places and kisses him too wetly and feels very silly and very scared and like he could tear the legs off of a thousand bugs and it still wouldn't be as thrilling as this, as touching L and having L's eyes go wide and his head press anxiously back into the pillow and his fingernails dig into his palms. Trying not to be bothered by it, but not succeeding.
B smiles. L twitches in his hand and glares harder. B wants to touch the bones, wants to tie himself to this moment so that he won't float away later, when everything will inevitably blur back out of focus.
"You are myself," he says.
Everything that exists of me is you.
B blinks.
It's raining. It rains too often here. His feet are wet and there are bums fighting in the alley across from him. They hadn't woken him up because he hadn't been asleep, but they'd cut into his mind, interrupted the flow of memory, and L is gone very quickly and everything is dirty and irrational again. Everything falls out of its rows and patterns.
There's a gunshot in the distance. Hm. Maybe it's not bums, then.
B rolls over, tries to crawl back into his head, but the rain is too heavy and someone is sobbing. Someone is always sobbing.
He'd missed London.
L is toweling off and Misa is texting with vehemence in the doorframe when Light comes back in. L lets the towel fall to the side, making like he doesn't notice, but leaving an open view of his genitalia - one that Light locks his eyes on, then in the next moment, staunchly pretends no to have noticed.
He picks out something for L to wear without seeming to notice that he's doing it, the way one flips on a light-switch when they enter a room - too routine to register. L takes notice of it, though, can't not. Light provides his clothes and Light dresses him and Light could choose not to dress him, if he'd like, could leave him naked, or make him earn it, make him beg, the way any proper captor would do. L's been imprisoned before, and for longer than this, and for a better reason, and Light's brand of confinement is comparatively tame. Perhaps he hasn't got the stomach for anything harsher.
"Misa," Light says, as L dresses himself with careless precision. She looks up, phone automatically forgotten, apparently drowned out by the sound of Light's voice - even mechanically uninvested as it sounds to L's ears. "Before you go to work, file a report with the police about the break-in last night. If you don't it will look suspicious. After that, go about your day as usual. I'll take care of the rest."
Misa nods like a good little solider, pig-tails bobbing. "Right. And the judgements?"
Light gives a vaguely disgusted glance, like he can't believe she has to ask. "Do the same amount as always."
"Yes," L calls over, "continue to slaughter dozens of people every day. People whom you've never met and who have no bearing on your life or present happiness. Enact an authoritarian death sentence that you have no particular investment in simply because your boyfriend tells you to. Brilliant. Excellent."
Light rolls his eyes, and L can practically see him ignoring the words and any substance they might contain. He's so intelligent on most matters, but it's almost as if he has a mental block in regards to Kira - or rather, himself. He's incapable of conceiving fault in any of his own actions, and if he were just a normal 18-year old boy with normal 18-year-old interests, it wouldn't be overly remarkable, and certainly not worth L's time. The fact that he somehow happened upon a magical killer notebook, combined with being brought up with firmly moralistic values, is what makes him more than just a tiny statistic on a tiny chart.
He is all the statistics on all the major crime reports worldwide, the biggest news story on every channel. He is a great and tremendous and unbearably constant overhanging force to every citizen of every country - whether for good or bad, whether they believe in Kira's vision or just attempt to avoid his wrath, he is important. Light Yagami was nobody a year ago. He made himself important.
That's where L disconnects; he was always somebody, something. Even before he properly understood what identity was, he had one.
It had been talent, sure - genius and ability and a certain small, sneaking cleverness particular to children of that age - but mostly it was just luck. He'd become what he is now by chance, a circumstance aligned just so. Watari had needed a base from which to build his beautiful machine, and L had been there, empty and unused, a void waiting to be filled.
It's an ugly way to look at it, but then truth tends to color things in unflattering shades.
"I believe in Kira's justice," Misa tells him, hands on hips, lips pouted prettily, like there's a camera around the corner or something. It's more a show for Light than for him, L knows, but he's paying more attention to how his hair looks in the bathroom mirror than anything else.
"Right," he says, not looking at Misa.
L waves his chained arm, drawing attention the fact that he can only manage to get half of his shirt on currently, and Light slips the key out of his sleeve - where he always keeps it and seems to think L hasn't noticed - and unlocks him only briefly enough to switch the cuff to the other hand. He holds L steady with a beleaguered, long suffering sort of look on his face, as if L is some man who'd broken into his home and insisted on being kept and imprisoned and treated like property, and Light is just withstanding the imposition out of the goodness of his dear heart.
L shakes his hair out, gets some water on Light's shirt and grins at the noise of disapproval he makes, subtly drawing his fingers along Light's wrist, so softly he might not even notice. He does, though, freezes for a moment, the way one does when touched by something monumental. L shoves down his grin, even though he's earned it, and Light draws his hands away, leading him back to his usual place on the bed.
L doesn't mind. He is owned, perhaps, but he is not the only one.
"I'll need the case files," L says, when he's chained securely to the headboard, curling his feet up beneath him. "As many as possible."
Light gives him a look as he straightens, like he's waiting for a punchline or something. Misa's texting again, likely doing whatever she can to ignore the fact that her truest love truly couldn't be more uninterested if he put effort into it - and it's quite a shame, too, given that she is such a pretty thing; L's sure he wouldn't say no, were she to ever ask. That's, of course, all dependent on the fact of her surely never asking.
"For the Kaito Hidaka case," L explains, then stops short, correcting himself. "Or not the Kaito Hidaka case, seeing as he hadn't really anything to do with it. The Liver case? The Tokyo Child Killer? Come on, these kinds of things need names if I'm to work on them properly." He chews on his pinky, twisting the skin around between his teeth, worrying the flesh into overturned patterns.
"You want to work on the case," Light says, not bothering the raise it into a question at the end. He brushes a bit of invisible lint off of his jacket, then looks at L with dull expectance. And it's all put on, of course - no doubt Light is calculating the possible risks and benefits of such a liberty, even as his eyes look young and simple, like the eyes of any pretty boy in university.
L pulls at his lip. "Well, yes. I'm bored, Light. I need something to do. I feel like a housewife with limited mobility and without a proper house. Give me something to do. I can do it." He sits up then, without really meaning to, but then commits to the role: wide eyes, errant fingers, pale and bleak and mesmerizing.
He knows how to make anyone feel things. Light is not an exception, as far as this goes.
"I suppose these case files would be in your system?" Light says, brushing at his sleeves, trying to look as unconcerned as possible.
"Don't think you can hack it," L says, "you can't." He leans back against one of his allotted pillows, lumpy and uncomfortable as it is - he misses hotel-fluff and high thread counts - and goes through the process in his head. "The local police force has likely contacted Watari, but I doubt he'd give you any information on possible criminals, especially if it's my information. No, better to go straight to the source. Hack the NPA, I know you can do that." He almost smiles at Light, but thinks better of it. "They'll have as much information as the police normally have - which is not much - but it's a start."
Light frowns. His warm, clever fingers play along the edge of the bedspread. "I'll see if I have time," he says, casually, though L takes it as more or less a guarantee. "I have a lot I need to do today."
Of course he does, mass murder necessitates a busy schedule, but he'll do as L asks. He's convinced himself - for propriety, no doubt - that he's very concerned and horrified by the murders of these children, and even if the only thing he really cares about is stopping the heart of whoever did it, he cares a lot. Kaito Hidaka had been a losing bet and he'll want to right the score, catch the one that got away, if only to prove his own eminence and power to himself - as if he really needs convincing.
Either way, it suits L's purposes, and as Light turns to leave, he calls, without shifting from his balled-up stance, "And coffee, I need coffee. And something sweet. Doesn't matter what. Anything. Many thanks."
Misa scoffs, jabs her phone buttons and stomps out in her heavy boots. Light looks L up and down and almost smiles, before following her out.
Bert catcalls every day and Mello gets used to it. He spits his tobacco on the sidewalk and Mello learns not to stand to his left. He curses loudly and often and Mello learns that calling people cuntboxes has a rather enjoyably unsettling effect. Bert doesn't like Mello and Mello doesn't like Bert, but they get on with the job, which is the only thing that matters.
Job, money, a plane ticket. Japan, L.
The latter too are rather more fuzzy in conception, as Mello only speaks passable Japanese and has terrible trouble with Kanji. And L - L's probably dead. The thought seeps in on late nights, in his dinky little motel room, when the hum of the dull lamplight crawls into his head and he can't think, can't breathe, it all becomes too much to handle. He wishes Matt were here.
Fuck, he wishes Matt were here.
Watson - the other man, the only one he generally meets with besides Bert - is actually alright. He's professional, gets the job done, and doesn't waste words. He and Mello can go whole hours on the pier without speaking, just walking up and down and scanning for unlicensed sellers encroaching on their section of the city. And it's strange to think of it in those terms - their - as if this is a group that Mello belongs to and not one he'd momentarily attached himself to for no purpose further than survival. He puts aside most of his pay for a plane ticket and fake passport and a little something to get him by once he makes it to Japan, but in the meantime, he does have to eat and make rent and replace his boots, which are ragged and coming apart at the edges.
Bert spits when he sees the new ones, shiny and leather and hot as fuck - if Mello's being completely honest - and makes a lot of disparaging comments regarding cock-sucking and bending over and the phrase 'twinky little bastard,' which more amuses than fazes him, even though he hasn't heard that kind of thing since he was twelve and some shit for brains who must have gotten into Wammy's by pure luck said something derisive - though much diluted from Bert's usual fare - about Mello falling asleep with his head in Matt's lap in the library.
Mello had beaten the kid so badly he'd needed stitches. Matt had watched on quietly, smoking one of his earliest cigarettes, letting Mello tear the boy up. He hadn't cared, hadn't tried to stop him, hadn't been shocked and outraged the way the rest of the students had been. The boy had been sent to the nurse and Roger had put Mello on a month of probation that involved a lot of studying in Roger's office after class, being told that while 'faggot' is certainly not a nice word, breaking someone's ribs isn't particularly nice either.
Mello had gotten a hundred percent on his next three tests, though, and Roger had ended his probation early.
"About Bert," Watson says once, when they're waiting in some shit coffee shop for a pick-up.
"Oh, is he just swell once you get to know him?" Mello asks, disdain evident as he trails his fingertips dully along the sticky tabletop. He doesn't want to hear about how the asshole who is constantly harassing him is just insecure, or scarred from the death of his dear mother, or some other kind of bullshit that people use to excuse themselves for being shitheads.
There's a woman in a seat by the window who keeps glancing at him, probably because of the faux-leather pants that Watson had dropped in his lap the other day, telling him to try to blend. Mello thinks about looking back at her, but doesn't know how.
Watson almost laughs, usual smile twitching larger. "Heh," he says, "no. Bert's a twat. Always been a twat, as far as I know, but he's important in the business, which means that it's important for him to like you well enough. You don't have to be mates, just don't let him get to you, is all."
Mello sips his shit coffee. It burns his tongue, makes his mouth taste thick and uncomfortable, like ash and caffeine. Watson's right, of course, but it's easier said than done. "I thought you were important in the business," Mello mumbles, stirring in more sugar, for lack of anything better to do. He'd rather have hot cocoa, honestly, but admitting as much is not likely to earn him much street cred.
"I am," Watson says, a quiet twinkle in his eye, "but I already like you, so no need to worry about that."
It's a nice feeling, almost, to hear that. It's not as if Watson is the pinnacle of brilliance or anything, but his approval jags warmly in Mello's chest, like something heavy and unfamiliar. He doesn't smile or blush or anything stupid like that, but he feels like he could, maybe. Maybe if it was someone else saying it.
The woman at the window seat keeps looking at him, and Mello shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. She might be pretty, although he hasn't really gotten a good look at her, just a long curtain of dark hair and her fingers scrabbling over the keyboard of her phone. Probably texting her friends, probably just a normal chick with nothing to do with any of the sort of things that Mello is all wrapped up in.
Mello coughs, tries to stomach his coffee again and can't quite manage it.
Watson nods out the window at the two well-dressed men standing on the street corner. "They're here."
As they leave to pay, Mello glances subtly at the woman's table, but she's already gone.
The computers hum and the investigation team watches him in stunned silence. Without L, the place feels empty, completely devoid of life. He might as well be talking to a set of mannequins.
"They broke into my home, Dad," Light says, voice taut with restrained emotion. It would makes sense for him to become hysterical in this situation, but he hasn't really the energy for it, so he'll instead impress them with his strength of will at being able to hold back his voice, to keep from yelling. "Misa's frightened out of her mind. She was afraid to leave the house this morning. I had to hold her hand down our apartment steps."
He looks imploringly at the group of officers, watching them each fall into excessive sympathy. Light is one thing, but Misa's the ticket, the thing to get them all outraged. Poor, helpless Misa Amane, too pretty to hurt a fly. Heh. He thinks Matsuda might be tearing up.
His father is, of course, worried, but also predictably skeptical. "Are you sure it wasn't just a regular break-in?" he asks. "Couldn't it be unconnected to the Kira case?"
There's a hopeful note in his voice, one Light recognizes from months of conveniently mounting evidence that pointed to the undeniable conclusion of Light's innocence. As much as he'd like for his father to get his wish, to be able to sit back and relax, just for a few days, that's not the direction he needs to conversation to go in.
Luckily, Aizawa steps in to steer it for him.
"I don't know, Chief," he says, slightly stroking his stubble. "It doesn't really add up. It's too nice a part of town to have high crime rates, but not ritzy enough for ambitious criminals to think they could get some really expensive stuff."
Light would take offense at his apartment being deemed of only medium quality if he had spent enough time in it to be an accurate judge as to whether or not Aizawa is right, but as it is, doesn't have time for offense, or any petty thing like that.
"Besides," he adds, "nothing was taken. No, I'm sure it's all connected somehow. I just don't know how." He sits down, then stands up again, displaying his fractured indecision, and of course, making sure his underlying misery regarding L's absence is clearly recognizable. If L were here, he knows they know, this would all be different. He would solve everything, fix the world - at least, that's what Light wants them to think. The truth is more wrapped up in L's thighs, in his cock and hands and stuttering breath.
Even when he's fucking Light, he feels fragile - maybe even more so then - a burnt-rock thing made of glass. Light's mind makes poetry out of L and lights fires from the kindling of words he won't speak. He becomes something wondrous and separate from the world around him, and L keeps him there, floating high and brilliant and immeasurable.
L is a shit and a delusional idiot. L doesn't care about enough things. L is surely not as attractive as Teru Mikami.
And yet.
"Maybe," Matsuda starts, and of course Light had known he would be the one who would. He is so young and incapable, and of course he would. "I mean," he tries again, "couldn't it possibly have been L?" He looks around at the other investigators, wide-eyed and cautiously hopeful. "Maybe he's still alive." He looks at Light, almost apologetically. "Maybe he's still investigating you."
"Matsuda," his father says sternly, before Light can react properly, "that's not possible. We've looked everywhere, checked all of the flights out - "
"No, no, it's an interesting theory," Light says. Pausing to sit down gain, hand to chin. Ever the darling thinker. After a moment, he looks around at the team. "You all know I haven't given up on the hope that L could still be out there, I just - " he looks down at the floor, the shiny leather of his shoes, "I would have liked to think that he would trust me by now."
"But if he doesn't," Ide puts in, looking excited, mostly because since he's been part of the investigation team, nothing much has really happened, and the break-in at Light's had more or less made his day, "not that I'm saying he has any reason not to - but if he doesn't, he might have left headquarters because he was worried about his safety. He might have relocated, and is continuing his investigation from somewhere else. Maybe even out of the country. We haven't seen Aiber and Wedy lately, either, maybe they're with him."
Light can see the excitement spreading from officer to officer, only really missing his father, who still looks stern and skeptical. And this conclusion isn't exactly what Light was shooting for, but it will inevitably lead to what he wants, anyway, and if the belief that L is still alive is necessary to have them cast suspicion elsewhere, then he will deal with it.
"But Light is innocent," his father says, "and besides…." He glances over towards one of the screens, the one that Watari usually uses to communicate to them, and then looks back at the team. And the question is deafening, even though it's been left unspoken.
If L really is alive, and has moved headquarters, then wouldn't he have taken Watari with him?
Matsuda is the first one to speak, and he comes up with the right answer for once in his life, the answer Light needed someone to speak: "Maybe he left Watari to, you know, spy on Light!" he says, in a very loud whisper, sounding quietly panicked.
Ide looks thrilled at this development. Light's father looks concerned. Light would look self-satisfied if he could get away with it.
He shakes his head, shoulders straightening. "I can't believe that. The moment we become suspicious and turn against each other is the moment that Kira wins." He glances over the computer. "I have to hold Watari-san's presence in good faith."
The other investigators nod, but look around, and Light is assured then that they, of course, won't.
The morning is grey and thin and the streets smell like cold smoke. As on most days, they send Matsuda out to get breakfast, and Aiber watches him come around the corner from where he leans against the side-wall of some little shop that never seems to be open, despite the lights always being on. It's early enough that the city isn't full to bursting yet, and there's space enough on the sidewalk to breathe easy and stay hidden.
He doesn't stay hidden for long. "Officer," he calls, moving out of his slump to raise a hand and take slow steps after Matsuda.
"Aiber-san?" the man says, brow going confused. He doesn't bother to fake a smile, probably couldn't if he tried. One of the few boons of idiocy is sincerity - there is no doubt of Touta Matsuda's honest goodness, because there is no doubt of his inability to lie. "What are you doing here? I thought - "
"I had fucked off after L went missing?" Aiber says with a slight smile, catching up to Matsuda but not stopping, just continuing the slow pace and forcing him to follow. "It's a fair bet, and if I knew where he was, I probably would be with him."
"Oh." Matsuda scratches awkwardly at the back of his head, looking to be on the very edge of uncomfortable. "You don't - you don't think he's dead?" He speaks lowly and purposefully, clearly less of a joke when he's out of the spotlight. A real person, almost - which is funny, because Aiber doesn't think of any of the investigators as particularly being individual people; they're just a conglomeration of inaccuracy to him, a blunt tool that Kira is using to corral the world, because that's all he needs to see them as.
It's almost funny, because L, who is impersonal and judgmental as all-fuck, undoubtedly knows them all inside out, from the bare facts to the human truths, to what they'd each eaten for lunch eight weeks ago. L is like that. It's not kindness - L has no capacity to be kind - just a specific brilliance.
Aiber shrugs, makes it look as casual as he can. "And how would Kira get his name?" He stops at the corner, and Matsuda trips over his own feet trying to keep pace, stumbling out a sound that may be the beginning of a puzzled reply, but Aiber cuts him off, flipping open the cigarette carton that had been left on his pillow, half-empty and covered in lipstick stains. "Do you smoke?"
He slips one between his lips and lights it up with a clumsy thumb. Matsuda shakes his head dumbly.
"No, me neither," Aiber says, "but Wedy's gone, so somebody's got to pick up the slack." He breathes in the smoke deep, clogging himself with it. It smells like her and the sentimentality of that thought almost amuses him. He wishes L smelled like something, something besides L, something he could set beside his bed to grab and play around with when he got bored. Something he could keep and have.
"Anyway," he says, watching the streets fill up slightly, "in order to kill L, Kira would need his name, right? And in order to get that, he'd have to know who L was, which means he'd need to be on the investigation team. And the only Kira suspect on the team is Yagami - junior, of course - which means that if L's dead, then Light's Kira, and if Light's definitely not Kira, then L's definitely not dead."
The logic is faulty of course, and if L were here, he'd berate him about it and quote philosophical principals of argument at him and get very huffy and mean because Aiber would only laugh him off, but L's not here and Matsuda isn't the brightest guy, and if you say anything to him in a convincing voice, he'll take it as God's honest truth.
He pulls at his shirts sleeves, then his collar, brow furrowed in thought, then asks Aiber, "So which do you think it is?"
Aiber smiles slightly, almost pleased because Matsuda's asking the right questions. Good boy. "I think it's both," he tells him, blowing out smoke. "That L's not dead, but Light is Kira."
"But that doesn't - you just said - " Matsuda struggles with the words, the thoughts and he pulls at his clothes some more, as if he thinks he can adjust himself into understanding.
"I know what I said," Aiber breathes, dropping his cigarette and crushing it underfoot - even though Tokyo has public ashtrays everywhere, even has special smoking sections on the street; Aiber deliberately ignores them. "I say things all the time. They don't mean anything." He pushes off from the corner, walking towards a decent looking coffee shop where they might have a passable cappuccino - there's too much tea in Japan and Aiber doesn't understand it - and Matsuda follows him in, stopping to hold the door open for a young woman with a shy smile and backpack slung over her shoulder.
They get in line, standing quietly in the soft din of the shop until, after a moment or two, Matsuda asks, without quite looking at him, "Aiber-san, how well do you know L?"
"Better than Light does," Aiber says, turning on his most self-deprecatingly charming smile and aiming it at him. "Better than most people do." He nods at the man behind the counter. "Cappuccino, please."
Matsuda orders several coffees and teas for the team, and even a few pastries - as if there's anyone left at the headquarters who will eat them - and Aiber waits with him, sipping his drink with his head leant against the wood-paneled wall.
Matsuda clears his throat after a moment, looking down at his hands. "I don't want to offend you, or, or pry or anything," he says, "but were you two - um - "
Hmm. So he's more perceptive than he looks, anyway. That's something. He doesn't wait for Matsuda to finish asking the question, even though it might prove vaguely amusing to watch him squirm his way through the words.
"Yeah, we were," he says, not outright explaining it, but not really outright needing to. "And so were he and Light, in case it wasn't obvious." He smirks at the only slightly shocked look that twists Matsuda's face, then heads for the door, nodding back as he goes. "Thanks for the drink."
His phone rings as he steps out of the cafe. He smiles to himself as he flips it open and presses the speaker to his ear. "Reckless," Watari tells him from the other end of the line. He sounds tired and grim, in a half-amused sort of way. He's no kindly grandfather, that's for sure, but sometimes Aiber thinks he's not as bad as all that.
"Don't worry," Aiber replies, stepping onto the sidewalk to blend into the mass of the crowd. They've been over this - it will work, at least better than sending scare tactics at Miss Amane will.
Watari's voice seems to grow more tired in the moment it takes him to speak. "I'm sure I never do."
Light's bought a space heater because the apartment's central system is broken, and taking it up with landlord would presumably draw unwanted attention to their situation. Perhaps if Light were a handyman sort it would be very different - he could take his shirt off and sweat heavily and wear a tool-belt and go to work; at least in L's fantasy he could, and those far outweigh the worth of the reality, which would most likely involve a lot of cursing and frustration, especially if Light couldn't get it on the first try. L's actually quite confident in his ability to repair, or at least discern a way to repair, most systems by just looking at them, but Light's not keen on taking him out into the front room and promptly declines his offer.
So, space heater. And bottled water and shitty connivence store sweets and a pen and notepad - no computer, of course, no access to anything that could possibly lead to escape or alert of his location - and a proper lamp or two. L sits on the floor - had tried the desk chair, but it had been too rickety to suit - and Light is spread out next to him.
Two young boys, ages 11 and 12 respectively, with no apparent connection - different schools, different social classes, different parts of town - beyond being young boys. No fingerprints or hair follicles left at either scene, no bodily evidence beyond the semen. It's the same in both cases, of course, and since the rest of the boys' bodies been cleaned to an almost obsessive degree - even the mouth, even the empty cavity where the liver had been removed - it seems obvious that the perpetrator had left his genetic material there purposefully, a sort of mark, a, "Here I am!"
He wants to be caught, or - rather more likely - to be chased.
"It's disgusting," Light says, leaning over L's shoulder to examine the file with the air of someone looking down at a bug that they mean to squash as soon as they can find a heavy enough object.
The crime scene photos clearly upset him, and on more than just a moral level, but he won't stop looking at them. There's a very visceral, almost fearful reaction to the sort of violence displayed, and perhaps once upon a time L had been unaccustomed enough to participate in it, but any feelings of shock or disgust have been wrung from him since, and now it's more or less routine.
"He's a monster," Light says, fingers tracing over the pictures, as if he could reach in and touch the ugliness. Touch it and destroy it and wipe it away, leaving a clean, crisp slate.
L knows better. That's not what you do with ugliness; you have to understand it first.
"He's a person," L tells him, without taking his eyes off of the coroner's notes. "Well, presumably." There is, after all, a Shinigami that occasionally sticks its strange head in on them, though Light promptly orders her out whenever he notices. "A terrible person, but imagining that anyone who commits horrifying acts must be something separate from human paints quite an unrealistic picture of humanity." He scribbles timeframe? in the margin of one of his pages, then turns it.
Light frowns. Of course he frowns. He's made an olympic-level sport out of vehemently disapproving of L's morals and he's going for the gold medal.
"So we should all just resign ourselves to being rotten and destructive, incapable of improving our nature?" Light snipes, sitting up slightly, like he can no longer bear to be close or comfortable with L.
L puffs out a breath, almost rolling his eyes. He generally works alone to avoid conversations just such as this. "If you're asking if I think that the man who murdered and raped those children shouldn't be caught and tried for his crimes - "
"I'm asking if you think that it's unreasonable to expect people to not murder and rape in the first place?" Light snaps, back going straighter, which - touché. He's far from being right, but he's hardly experienced or world-weary enough to think anything but that. That human beings can be controlled and appealed to using only the power of reason.
An idealistic child. L had always said so.
"To a certain extent," he tells Light, not shifting out of his slump. "Mammals kill and fuck and then they die, and although it's a very nice idea to think that we, as a species, can completely disconnect ourselves from our base, violent parts, a number of people slip through the cracks simply as a matter of course." He doesn't need to hear Light's disgusted choke to know that he disagrees. "I believe the common term for it is, 'evil',' or, in some cases, 'mental illness.'"
He does flick his eyes at Light then, to see if he takes the comment in the vein that L intends it, but of course it doesn't even register. When talking about murderers, Light completely disassociates himself from the category, which is ridiculous, seeing as he's killed more people than most of the inmates on death row combined. To him, it's just Godly intervention. He can find no flaw in his own dogma, not because he believes that Kira's actions are objectively right - the last few months without his memories can attest to that - but simply by virtue of it being his. There is some level of psychotic narcissism here just waiting to be diagnosed by an eager psychotherapist somewhere. Maybe when this all over, L will forgo the execution and just send Light to therapy.
As if it could ever be that simple.
"And those of us who manage not to succumb to our inherent horribleness should have to suffer because of those who do?" Light spits, with a quiet, determined loathing, like he's flipped on the justice setting in his operational panel and can now focus on nothing else. L half-wishes he could switch him off.
"Everyone suffers in some form or another," L says, turning back to his files, "and the violence is necessary, if not on a personal level, then in the grand scheme. Your quest to erase all of this from the world in one broad stroke - along with turning the planet into an international police state; congratulations on that, by the way - takes nothing into the account but the most basic, uncomplicated facts of the matter - "
Light is leaning forward now, getting in L's face. He rocks between extremes of disgust and obsessive attachment when it comes to L, and - given how much their relationship, whatever it may be, is necessary for Light to maintain his identity - it can't be particularly healthy. Nothing about Light can.
"And yet, I've done more for crime rates in the last year than you've managed over the course of, what is it, a 17 year career?" he says, breathing into L's face. He smells like mouthwash and tea. The animosity drains out of his voice for a moment and then he cocks his head and asks, in what might be a slightly impressed tone, "You've been solving crimes since you were eight?"
L fiddles with his pen, tries not to smile. "Six, technically."
Light deflates then, and if there's a fight to be had on this matter - which there surely is - it's shoved to the back for now, both of them putting it aside in favor of their mutual enjoyment of one another.
"You're brilliant," Light says, looking almost proud, like L's accomplishments somehow reflect on him.
"Yes."
"I'm brilliant," he continues, because he's in that sort of mood now.
"Yes."
"You love me," Light says, going a step further, but L will only humor him for so long.
He rolls his eyes. "Hand me that file, will you?" he says.
Light doesn't hand him the file. Light wraps his hand around L's throat and sends him down heavily into the floor, shoulder blades knocking hollowly with the impact. The pressure is quick and exciting and unexpected - only worth anything because of how unexpected it is. This is not fair. This is not how the scene goes, how they work, trudging on, shoulder to shoulder, ignoring the bad parts and poking fun at the good. L hadn't seen this coming and it's not fair and Light isn't letting up the pressure, isn't stopping, isn't even speaking.
L can't see him. His hands are free enough, although one is still chained to the bed, but he doesn't move them. He wants to see where this is going. Wants to beat himself for not having expected it.
Light's face appears very suddenly, shifts into view, like he's finished putting on his stage make-up and running the lines, and is now fit for performance. L struggles for breath.
"Are you one of them?" Light asks, from up above, from so far away. "A monster? Have you slipped through the cracks?" There's a curious note in his voice, as if he's at once lost his mind and gone more lucid than he usually is. He is touching something that exists, saying something that he actually thinks instead of sweeping around with hand gestures and rhetoric and teenage superiority.
"Do you - " L starts to says - do you think I am? - but Light's either looking for another answer or doesn't want an answer at all, just wants to hear himself speak, wants to say the words and for L to listen.
"You're six years older than me," Light says. Simple, clean and dry; his voice keeps draining and writhing, bouncing from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. "When I was 12 you were 18."
"So - "
"So, would you have raped and murdered me and cut out my liver?"
It's a very strange question to be asked, but L knows this role well enough; after the sex and the companionship and the quiet assurances, after all that, when he finally has enough evidence, when he pulls the rug out from under the monster of the week and sends off his report to the police, that's when his part changes. He is the betrayer and he always, always gets his man, and he always goes home and has tea and watches the ceiling and cycles through reports for his next case and reboots everything very nicely.
"I don't see any reason why I should have," L says.
World domination is not a team sport and L isn't going to pretend to agree with Light's idiotic dichotomy just to earn favor, just to keep from being choked. If Light wants to argue this, he can let up and stop playing the teary-eyed victim and stop pretending that anything truly bad has happened to him in his life, as if he can identify with the plight of the population he purports to want to save.
"What about simple human violence?" Light asks. "You're a mammal, aren't you? What's the difference between you and them?" His words are less than perfectly sane, but his tone is so even and measured. "What's the difference between me and them? What the difference between you and me?"
"Well, currently," L says, "it's that one of us is about to pass out."
Light lets up his grip, fingers loosening to stroke along L's neck. It should be intimate, but it's not, feels like being touched by metal and rubber. Is it okay to really like someone and also hate them so much at the same time?
"What makes a person evil, L?" Light asks, leaning closer. "Is it action, is it moral views, or is it just something tangible?" He taps his fingers along L's jaw and looks like he's somewhere that isn't this shit apartment in god knows what part of Tokyo. "I can taste it. I look at their faces and I can taste it."
"And what does my face taste like?" L asks.
Light kisses him and it's not at all rough. L sometimes wants to sink into him, to like him in a way that he can maybe like someone like him, but right now it feels uncomfortable, almost squalid in a way. He's so sick of everything that this is and if there was a clean way for them to go on a break - maybe imprison other people for a while - L would suggest it.
"I want to kill you every night," Light says, matter-of-factly, as he pulls back. "I'm so bothered by you. I want to kill you over and over again, but if I just do it the once then you're gone and where does that get me?" He kisses the corner of L's mouth and it's kinder this time, but still no good, still all twisted up in something twisting that Light tends to throw into situations. "Do you ever just want to kill everyone?" he asks, after a moment.
That's a very mad thing to say and Light just might be earning extra-credit on his Kira suspicion with it, but - but. "Yes," L says. Light kisses him again and it feels like pulling out the bones.
It's very easy to get his number from the front office and even easier to get him to agree to another lunch meeting.
The cafe is too loud, the tea isn't very good, and Mikami won't stop wiping his hands. Light smiles, leans in, and draws the toe of his shoe up Mikami's calve. He freezes, goes stiff, and wipes his hands again. He's either very uncomfortable or very turned on or both.
"What are you doing, Yagami-kun?" he says lowly.
Light's smile twitches. "I'm seducing you, Mikami-san. Can you not tell?"
Mikami takes off his glasses, wipes them, and puts them back on. Light wonders if he's ever been comfortable anywhere in his life, thinks probably not.
Mikami doesn't kiss anything like L, but that's okay, that's exactly right, because L kisses like dust and tastes like crumbling civilization and salt and fear and unworthy things. L rocks between being absolutely necessary and completely unbearable and Light can't decide what to do with him or do about him. He sometimes wants to murder him graphically and sometimes wants to kill him very softly, drug him just a little too much, put him to sleep and then lie on the bed next to him as he drifts off into non-existence.
It would need to be a bigger bed. The room would need more windows. Light wants to smash things and wants to scribble in the Death Note. He can't kill Watari, not because of L, but because he can't manage to get his name. That's fine. There are plenty of other people that could afford to be gotten rid of and, as it turns out, Light can hack into L's system.
He'd written the names down before meeting up with Mikami, and as he presses him into the mattress, the analog clock at the bedside ticks right down to the minute.
Timothy Morello, Melissa Kenwood. So long, goodbye, terrible to know you. He thinks about tracking down everyone who's ever touched L at all and killing them in creative ways, but it feels like far too much work for someone so worthless.
Mikami is rather hard work - enjoyable, malleable, different - but hard work. He squirms and gasps like he's afraid to come, and Light has to bodily drag it out of him, but it's worth it. It makes him feel like God. L just makes him feel diseased.
Another child is murdered two days later, a girl this time. Light prints out the file and brings it to L, box of donuts in hand, charming smile on his face.
tbc.
end notes: I'm sorry all of their relationship problems are stupid. I'm sorry they're both a bit stupid. I must be as well, since I've committed myself to writing these bastards. Apologies to the reader who was so relieved last chapter that Light didn't sleep with Mikami. I felt so bad when I read that, because this one had already been planned and drafted. On the one hand, I'd like to make everyone happy, but on the other, I'd like to make everyone yell and cry and threaten to punch my lights out. Ideally, it'd be a combination of the two.
Thank you for reading. I would really appreciate any and all feedback, good or bad, but I still love you all whether or not you review.